Your article “ Finding Armenia” (FT Magazine, November 17) wrongly describes the events that unfolded in eastern Anatolia during the final years of the Ottoman Empire. Labelling these events as a “genocide” perpetrated by one side against the other and vilifying the Turkish nation has long been the main feature of the one-sided Armenian approach. It is unacceptable and obviously disputable from a variety of standpoints, including legal and historical.
A closer look at the history of the first world war and the final period of the Ottoman Empire would reveal that reality is much more complex than what some Armenian circles would have you believe.
That being said, Turkey does not deny the hardship and suffering of many Ottoman Armenians, along with all the other constituent nations of the Ottoman Empire, during the first world war. What we oppose is creating a “hierarchy of sufferings” and baselessly accusing a nation of the biggest of all crimes.
Turkey firmly believes that drawing enmity from the past only fuels ill feelings and prevents the Turkish and the Armenian people from becoming any closer.
Ümit Yalçin
Ambassador of Turkey to the UK